In the dispatch, coded 59, Mayor Tran Dinh Dinh said three beach areas -- Nhat Le, My Canh and Bao Ninh -- were affected by cave-ins during the high tourism season, threatening the lives of the people on the beaches.

At Nhat Le beach, a seafront section of 1,500m, stretching from the Nhat Le coastal border guard station to Muong Thanh hotel, collapsed into the sea, with the sea waters encroaching 7m to 10m into the shore and creating sand cliffs as high as 2m. The shore is reportedly continuing to collapse due to the fierce waves.

In My Canh and Bao Ninh, the cave-ins were reportedly very serious, with the dykes likely to crumble as the sand beneath them has been washed away.

The same day, the government of Quang Binh Province convened an urgent meeting to consider solutions to prevent the abnormal cave-ins and measures to provide safety to the people on the beach.

Phap Luat (Law) newspaper cited some unidentified local sources as blaming the cave-ins on the dredging activities at the mouths of the local rivers.

It has been reported that the Viet Nam Inland Waterway Department under the transport ministry is responsible for a project to dredge these estuaries.

The Hoang Kim Viet Company, a contractor of the project, reportedly removed 300,000cu.m of sand from the estuaries. — VNS